


the sky burned black

by unraelated



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Birthday, Fade to Black, Fluff, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Uhh.... happy birthday Dimitri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:46:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28197876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unraelated/pseuds/unraelated
Summary: After the world ended, they found each other. Now, they just have to survive.(A short scene at camp.)
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 9
Kudos: 78





	the sky burned black

**Author's Note:**

> What my followers thought I meant when I said I was writing weird shit: kinky porn  
> What I actually meant: post-apocalyptic rimworld zombie desert au except it's still in fodlan or something i guess????

The stars were brighter than they ever had been before, now that all the fires and lights in the cities had gone out. Claude looked upward toward the canopy of constellations above them and felt, for a moment, more at peace. Secure in a world where all security had been ripped from him.

His companion had first watch, but Claude took the time to stare up at the brilliant lights above them both, indifferent to the suffering that had gone on beneath them. He could still trace out the familiar pathways with his fingers, _Fimbulvetr_ , _Sothis_ , _Duma_ , and part of him even remembered the snippets of stories his mother would tell him about them - all of the giant wars in the sky which seemed so mighty and far away.

He would trade any of them for what he had now.

Out here, everything was dust. Even the stories, even his mother. The earth was a flat and unappealing canvas, the ground was hard and infertile, and whatever curse the gods had laid on them back in the dawn of creation had seen itself to fruition.

“Need help with your roll?”

The question jarred him out of his melodramatic reverie. Claude blinked and turned back toward his hooded companion, shaking his head.

“I’m fine. Just got distracted.”

With that, he turned his gaze back down toward his pack and the dust beneath his feet, bending down on one knee to open up the bag and pull out his tattered bedroll. His arm twinged with the tug of an old scar, but he managed alright and dragged it open near the embers of the fire.

A fire out here was risky, but necessary. Without the heat to thoroughly cook the disease out of their meat, there was no telling what effects it might have had. They had kept it low, tamped it down quickly, and eaten like it was utilitarian, just another thing to do in order to keep their bodies alive.

They didn’t speak much. They didn’t have to. Ever since Claude met this man - swinging his lance through the bodies of the husklike corpses of the monsters around them - he had known that Dimitri was a safe bet. He was strong, quiet, haunted by his own ghosts and equally as much of a companion to them as he was to Claude himself. He often took first watch so that Claude did not see him toss and turn in his bedroll, but Claude didn’t mind. It was rare enough just to find another living soul out here, and everyone had their demons to bear.

Dimitri crouched and moved to set up his own bedroll, though he wouldn’t be sleeping in it for some time. There weren’t any particular landmarks or trees around, but there was a stone that was tall enough for him to sit on as he waited and watched the earth around them.

The planet had wilted and died years ago. Some said it was the curse of the goddess, others said that it was a foreign nation poisoning their crops, and more still said that it was the work of a race of men who lived far below the earth’s surface. At first, Claude burned with the desire to know, to _understand_ it. 

Then, as the people had died by the thousands, leaving nothing but corpses to rise and consume their brethren… well, the desire to know had to take a second seat to the desire to survive.

Survival was written in Claude’s blood, etched into his veins. He would survive. The question was: what kind of a world was he surviving _for_?

One with Dimitri in it - he knew this now.

They had been traveling together for some time, so Dimitri had to see some value in Claude’s presence. Even if they didn’t speak much, the way they moved together was instinctive, a harmony of tendons and blades. They defended one another, scavenged food for one another, and did not fall to the enemy.

Sometimes - very rarely, but _sometimes_ \- Dimitri would crawl into Claude’s bedroll with him and they would remember the pleasures of a life that was long dead.

Claude found that he enjoyed that. Dimitri’s hands were calloused and his body was a latticework of scars and rough edges, but it was the kind of thing that Claude found himself drawn to, even before this disaster. It was a bright spark on his lonely horizon. It was what he had.

“Getting cold,” Dimitri observed, sniffing at the air.

Claude reached for his pack again, pulling out a thin notebook. While Dimitri had long since abandoned the laws and learnings of men that they all once abided by, Claude was not so easily freed. His notebook held all of the things he knew now: recipes for explosives, the names of his family and friends who were long gone, and a small list in the back of dates that he’d painstakingly written in a rigid hand, back when he still had a nice quill tucked away in his bag.

He took a charcoal nub from the dead fire and carefully tracked the numbers that he’d been crossing out each day. The early ones were scratched out in ink or graphite. Some were smudged with flecks of mud that he’d smeared into the page. Some were crossed with blood, dabbed from various injuries.

This one, he marked off with the charcoal from the fire.

“It’s… day twenty, ethereal moon,” he told Dimitri in response, his lips pursed. “Midwinter.”

That explained it. Dimitri was from Faerghus, Claude knew that much, but the rest of the man was as much of a mystery as anything else in this world was. In Faerghus, it would snow during the winter - and the spring, and the fall. Here, it was simply a barren tundra. Was Faerghus like this too, even now? Or was the snow black with the planet’s disease?

Dimitri fell silent next to him and Claude looked up, repressing the urge to shiver. A little body heat might do him nicely tonight, but he hesitated to bring it up.

For good reason it seemed, because when Dimitri spoke again, it was with the most unlikely words Claude could have expected from him.

“...it’s my birthday.”

His voice was soft, weak. Claude had never heard that tone from him before and didn’t know how to take it, even when the words themselves pierced through all of the protective layers around his heart.

 _Birthdays_ were for the living, for a time before the end of the world. Birthdays were irrelevant here, with no one to celebrate and no gifts to give.

Still.

It meant something.

“Happy birthday,” Claude murmured back, and he didn’t mean for it to sound dismissive but it did. Dimitri grunted in turn and Claude looked up at him, shaking his head quickly as if to brush off his rude tone. “I mean - I mean it, Dimitri.”

Dimitri looked back toward him with his one eye, expressionless, impossible to read. Claude tried again, putting more feeling into the words than he had before.

“Happy birthday.”

Dimitri looked away.

Claude sighed, heaving himself up and out of his warm bedroll to move to Dimitri’s side, nudging next to him on the rock. His fingers found Dimitri’s own - thick with scars, half of his pinkie missing, wrist swollen from a recent sprain - and he carefully threaded his hand atop it.

“How old are you?”

There was a long pause before Dimitri slowly turned his hand, allowing Claude to hold it, allowing Claude to press their shoulders together in solidarity, companionship.

“...I don’t remember.”

But Claude was undeterred.

“You seem about the same age as me, yeah? I was born in 1162. Does that sound familiar?”

Dimitri nodded and Claude continued.

“Well, lucky for you, I’ve kept track. You’re twenty-three - wait, twenty-four now.”

It seemed to be useful enough information. Dimitri quietly thanked him, but Claude didn’t move from his seat by his side. He felt brave tonight, determined to bring something good into the world where so much good had been ripped away. Dimitri was twenty-four. What else was there?

“Where I’m from, that means twenty-four kisses.”

Dimitri blinked, but could not quite interpret the meaning of the words before Claude leaned forward boldly, pressing the first kiss square on his cheek, beneath the thin scar from the wound that took out his eye. Dimitri was very still in the wake of it, and Claude found himself grinning despite the anxiety that formed a knot in the pit of his stomach.

He was worried he’d be pushed away or rejected, despite all the time that they had spent together, but Dimitri did neither, and so Claude murmured: “one.”

Another kiss. “Two.”

And another. “Three.”

Dimitri turned then, slow on the uptake as he always was when it came to physical contact. He caught Claude’s next kiss on the mouth and returned it, lifting his free hand to thread his fingers through Claude’s hair.

Four.

By the time they reached _thirteen_ , the watch was abandoned in favor of the fourteenth. By the time they reached _twenty_ , Claude’s bedroll was pulled tight over them both. At _twenty-four_ , Dimitri was taking in deep breaths next to him, exerted, warm, and - most importantly - smiling, just a fraction.

“I think…” he started, his voice quiet. Claude turned on his side to listen to him, tugging the warmth of his blanket up above their bare shoulders. “...I think that’s the best birthday gift I’ve had.”

“And to think you almost forgot,” Claude teased, affectionately sliding his thumb along the wetness of Dimitri’s lower lip.

Dimitri didn’t respond. Maybe he didn’t need to. Claude simply let himself enjoy the warmth of him, crawled on top of Dimitri like a cat, and perched warmly on him, as if to prevent him from sitting up and moving away.

“...I’m glad I found you,” Dimitri told him softly. Claude let that statement sink in underneath his skin and blanket his heart with its tenderness.

He felt more _wanted_ here than he ever had in the times before the end of the world.

Dimitri had a way of making him feel like that.

“I’m glad I found you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Uh, Happy Birthday Dimitri, I'm sorry
> 
> Twitter: [@unraelated](https://twitter.com/unraelated)


End file.
